I can't help but think we need to provide an accessible format also, and
PDF isn't really that.
If we go with e-distribution, we have some choices of formats (HTML
being the most obvious); if we go for paper, then presumably we'd need
braille copies, ugh.

PDF can be accessible. The newer versions of the PDF standard allow a
document to embed information about the actual text, which is used by
the accessibility code in Adobe's PDF reader and also to allow
reformatting documents for smaller screens.

If you want something that will print nicely on paper, PDF is a much
better choice than HTML.